Pasta with Beets, Soybeans, and Lemon

April 9, 2006 at 6:45 am (Beans, C (2 stars, okay, edible), Pasta, Soybeans & edamame, Starches, Website / blog)

I found this recipe online when I was looking for something to do with edamame and beets. The author said it had “Odd combination but great flavor.”

  • 1 package of fresh pasta, ideally, but one package of regular if you don’t have access to fresh. I use spinach flavor.
  • 3 beets, red prefered
  • 1 onion
  • garlic, as many cloves as you like
  • 2 lemons, use both the liquid and thin peel of one half lemon
  • 1 cup grated parmigano cheese from the deli section, Kraft won’t do here.
  • 1/4 of lite whipping cream or nonfat milk, depending on how creamy you want the end result to be.
  • 1T red chili flakes, I like there to be heat
  • 1T black pepper
  • 1t olive oil plus 1T
  • 1.5 cups frozen soybeans
  • basil for garnish
  1. Clean the beets and chop of top and end, where it begins to get thin. Don’t worry about peeling yet. In a foil bag (just take a large piece of foil and make into an envelope of sorts) put beets, as many garlic cloves as using (still in skins), 1t of olive oil and squirt of lemon. Place in oven for roughly an hour.
  2. When getting near the end of the hour put water on to boil. In a saute pan use remainder of oil (1T) and sautee up chopped onion till it begins to brown slightly. Add in chili pepper flakes and black pepper. Add grated lemon peel. Take cooled beets and pop out of skins and cut up into bite size pieces. Toss into sautee pan along with soybeans and lemon juice. Mush the baked garlic into the sauce.
  3. Cook pasta according to directions.
  4. Mix in 1/4 of lite whipping cream. The sauce will turn pink. Taste and season with salt and pepper as needed.
  5. When pasta is done, drain and toss into the sauce, adding lemon juice as needed, along with cheese and basil. I will sometimes also add in other veggies (asparagus is good!) and a little more cheese on top with some pepper.

My notes:

I didn’t follow the recipe to the T, but I used the basic ideas. The sauce (using 2% milk) was very lemon-y and tasty before I added the beets and edamame and pasta. I’m definitely going to try making a lemon sauce like this in the future. But then once I added all the ingredients I found it a little boring, like it needed more fat and salt! I guess I should have used the cream! I couldn’t really taste the edamame, but the texture was interesting. I thought adding beets to pasta was an interesting idea, and I’ll definitely be trying it again. It added a very subtle sweetness to the whole dish. One warning: I only used half the red chile flakes and it was still very spicy.

Update: this was pretty tasty cold. Spicy, a little sweet, a teeny bit lemon-y. I didn’t want to stop eating it. Needs some work but perhaps it should be served cold instead of warm.

Rating: B-

Permalink 1 Comment